Traditional Operating Environments (OEs) are struggling today to meet the high data rate performance and stringent Size, Weight and Power (SWaP) requirements of resource-constrained Software Defined Radios (SDRs). This paper addresses these challenges and explains why a next-generation commercial-off-the-self (COTS), standards-compliant SDR OE is needed—one that is vertically-integrated and performance-optimized.


The paper outlines the challenges that must be met, discusses the crucial roles of middleware and the CORBA Extensible Transport Framework (ETF), and explains how next-generation OEs can relieve radio manufacturers of the development and maintenance burden associated with custom OEs, while significantly accelerating time-to-market for their SDR products.